Syrian Islamic Front (Syria)

‏الجبهةالإسلام&#

Last modified: 2014-12-13 by zoltán horváth
Keywords: syria | rebels | khorasan | nusra |
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image by Zoltan Horvath, 01 December 2014

image by Zoltan Horvath, 01 December 2014

• Description

• Syria

"The Syrian Islamic Front, also called The Islamic Front (Arabic: ‏الجبهة الإسلامية‎, al-Jabhat al-Islāmiyyah) is a merger of seven  rebel groups involved in the Syrian civil war that was announced on 22 November 2013. An anonymous spokesman for the group has stated that it will not have ties with the Syrian National Coalition, it has stated that he hopes for recognition from the Syrian National Council. They want a revolution and not politics and foreign agendas. The group is widely seen as backed and armed by Saudi Arabia"
According to Aron Lund's report, "Syria’s Salafi Insurgents: The rise of The Syrian Islamic Front", the SRF was defunct in fall 2013 due to low recruiting in the period when Ahrar al-Sham had dropped out of the group, thus boosting and shifting the increasing number of fighters towards the Islamic Front. The Islamic Front is the biggest of several alliances nurtured by a flood of money from private and public  sources in the Arab Gulf states. These and other coalitions formed in the past months have excluded the jihadis of the Isis and the al-Qaeda".
On 22 November 2013, seven Islamist groups agreed to a pact that would dissolve the groups individually and lead to the formation of the Islamic Front. The groups were:
- Al-Tawhid Brigade (formerly part of the Syrian Islamic Liberation Front)
- Ahrar ash-Sham (formerly part of the Syrian Islamic Front)
- Liwa al-Haqq (formerly part of Syrian Islamic Front)
- Suqour al-Sham (formerly part of the Syrian Islamic Liberation Front)
- Jaysh al-Islam (formerly part of Syrian Islamic Liberation Front)
- Ansar al-Sham (formerly part of the Syrian Islamic Front)
- Kurdish Islamic Front
This new coalition is not to be confused with the Syrian Islamic Front (SIF) or the Syrian Islamic Liberation Front (SLF/SILF). The same day The Syrian Islamic Front (SIF), which was formed in December 2012, was dissolved by Harakat Ahrar as-Sham’s Hassan Abboud in favor of the new Islamic Front. It should also be known that there is an established Kashmiri group with the same name but no affilitation with the Syrian Islamic Front whatsoever.
A Liwa al-Tawhid member said the old names "will disappear and the groups will now melt [sic] into the new merger. There will be no such thing as Liwa al-Tawhid."
Sources: http://arirusila.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/89ee5-islamicfrontnov2013.jpg (http://arirusila.wordpress.com/2013/12/20/syria-updates-the-new-islamic-front-and-whodunnit-iii/)
http://carnegieendowment.org/syriaincrisis/?fa=54103
http://www.trackingterrorism.org/group/islamic-front-syriaand
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_Front_(Syria)
In December 2013, the Islamic Front seized the FSA (Free Syrian Army) headquarters along with key supply warehouses in Atmeh as well as the nearby border crossing with Turkey at Bab al-Hawa. The FSA confirmed on 13 December 2013 that the Islamic Front had obtained machine guns and ammunition that was not supposed to be in the possession of the Islamists. Later that month the Islamic Front and Free Syrian Army reconciled."
Their administration flag is a white horizontal flag with the logo in the middle, as seen here.
Their war flag is the same as the administrative flag, but in a black horizontal flag, as seen here.
Both flags can be seen in this screenshot of a video released on November 22, 2013 showing the formation of the Islamic Front.
Esteban Rivera, 15 November 2014